From the Ionosphere to the Classroom: Exploring the Earth's Upper Atmosphere with CINDI

CINDI (Coupled Ion Neutral Dynamic Investigation) is a NASA funded instrument scheduled for an early 2005 launch by the Air Force on board the C/NOFS (Communications/Navigations Outage Forecast System) satellite. In preparation for this launch, our education and public outreach program is well under way, and focuses on making the difficult-to-visualize science of the ionosphere understandable to students in middle school and above. Our formal education strategy is to create engaging and usable materials that meet teachers' needs and integrate well into existing curriculum in today's era of high stakes testing. We will present our middle school educator guide, a preview of our new CINDI comic book, highlights from our 2004 educator workshops, and future plans to bring the ionosphere into classrooms around the country.